y wits; for it is to be found in Ariosto's satires,
and is, perhaps, yet older[12]. But the merit of such stories is the art
of telling them.

In his amorous effusions he is less happy; for they are not dictated by
nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They
have the coldness of Cowley, without his wit, the dull exercises of a
skilful versifier, resolved, at all adventures, to write something about
Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study. His fictions,
therefore, are mythological. Venus, after the example of the Greek
epigram, asks when she was seen _naked and bathing_. Then Cupid is
_mistaken_; then Cupid is _disarmed_; then he loses his darts to
Ganymede; then Jupiter sends him a summons by Mercury. Then Chloe goes
a-hunting, with _an ivory quiver graceful at her side_; Diana mistakes
her for one of her nymphs, and Cupid laughs at the blunder. All this is,
surely, despicable; and even when he tries to act the lover, without the
help of gods or goddesses, his thoughts are unaffecting or remote. He
talks not "like a man of this world."

The greatest of all his amorous essays is Henry and Emma; a dull and
tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the man, nor
tenderness for the woman. The example of Emma, who resolves to follow an
outlawed murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no
imitation; and the experiment by which Henry tries the lady's constancy,
is such as must end either in infamy to her, or in disappointment to
himself.

His occasional poems necessarily lost part of their value, as their
occasions, being less remembered, raised less emotion. Some of them,
however, are preserved by their inherent excellence. The burlesque of
Boileau's Ode on Namur has, in some parts, such airiness and levity as
will always procure it readers, even among those who cannot compare it
with the original. The epistle to Boileau is not so happy. The poems to
the king are now perused only by young students, who read merely that
they may learn to write; and of the Carmen Seculare, I cannot but
suspect that I might praise or censure it by caprice, without danger of
detection; for who can be supposed to have laboured through it? Yet the
time has been when this neglected work was so popular, that it was
translated into Latin by no common master.

His poem on the battle of Ramilles is necessarily tedious by the form of
the stanza: an uniform mass of ten lines, thirty-five tim